Tuesday, December 17, 2013

First draft of short review article

I have completed a first draft, except for the conclusion, of a brief article entitled "The Economics of Tax Law" that was commissioned from me (with said title attached) as a chapter in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics.  It's a good thing that I have already gotten this far, since I understand January 15 to be the preferred due date.  (My contract says June 15, but that may just be the non-negotiable drop-dead date when the editors would give up and move on.)

Also making it good that I have only the conclusion left are considerations of length.  I'm at 8,728 words, including footnotes and bibliography, and am enjoined not to exceed 10,000.

Obviously, the economics of tax law is a rather large topic to cover in so little space.  The piece accordingly is a rather high-altitude tour, ranging from optimal income taxation, to why and when tax neutrality promotes efficiency, to the nature of the problems posed for the income tax system by the realization requirement, to the income versus consumption tax debate, to why we may feel enjoined to tax corporate income at the entity level (and what adverse consequences this has), to briefly discussng the perennial, though generally non-actionable, popularity of 1986-style tax reform.

I suppose I will post in on SSRN early in the new year.  While it certainly doesn't break new ground (nor should it), I am hoping to feel good about it as a swift overview.

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